Fallout 4’s Character System

One thing they "improved" (via no repeating the same shitty mistake for a fourth time), no Level Scaling in this one it seems so leveling up won't be as useless as in Skyrim where you would just end up fighting overpowered bandits if you actually leveled up.
 
Walpknut said:
One thing they "improved" (via no repeating the same shitty mistake for a fourth time), no Level Scaling in this one it seems so leveling up won't be as useless as in Skyrim where you would just end up fighting overpowered bandits if you actually leveled up.
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WOW! Have they really improved?

We'll see.
 
Walpknut said:
Level 4 Perception and Intelligence have the icons for Lockpicking and hacking respectively so it will probably be a perk where ever rank lets you hack/Lockpick a "harder" type of terminal/lock. So they didn't even fix the issue with Lockpicking being kind of barebones, they just turned them into a specific perk. Great Game design.
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I think that's kind of how we ended up here.

Consider this train of thought for development: " You know, lockpick and science don't really do anything except at 25, 50, 75, and 100; there's no difference between a 50 lockpick and a 65 lockpick even though 15 skill points is basically an entire level. So maybe instead of a 100 point scale we could just do, like a 5 point scale? Have very easy, easy, medium, hard, very hard be the five levels? Well, hmm... if we condense our skills by a factor of 20, how many skill points should we give out per level... just one?"

And from there you get the merging of skills and perks.
 
The path of least effort. Bethesda should patent that phrase, is their entire design philosophy.
 
Honestly though, does every skill need to follow the same structure? I mean, with some skills it should be determined by number and percentages but with others there are only thresholds so why should they require 1-100? If there is a difference, no matter how small it is, between 63 and 64 in a skill then it should stay as a 1-100 skill but if a skill is based on 0, 10, 20, 30 etc or even 0, 20, 40, 60 etc then why not just have a 0-10 for the 10, 20, 30 and a 0-5 for the 0, 20, 40? I don't think everything needs to be under the exact same rule-set really. That's why I'm for the idea that UnDeCafIndeed at Bethesda forums suggested where skills would split off at the 50 mark into specializations. So some skills would go the normal route of 1-100, some would go 1-50 for general knowledge and then branch off into specializations that go from 51 to 100, some skills would cost X amount of points and they would only be 10 or 5 levels as smaller numbers doesn't do the skill any justice.

Lockpicking should be a 1-100 skill though, and it should not require a minigame. Same with Hacking. But a skill like Speech? It'd be far better to just have a 0-10 skill where each level of the skill costs 10 points.

Trying to force either system, a 0-5 or a 1-100 on every skill doesn't make much sense to me as some skills simply won't benefit from such a system.
 
Lockpicking should be turned into the "infiltration" skill, remove Hacking from the Science skill, add in the Lockpick kits of the first 2 games, add in a bunch of other uses for item either crafting items and such. Leave the Minigame for characters with low lockpick skills (and restrict their access to lockpicking the more advanced doors) while the high level players just go around with their auto lockpicking kits and viruses that only they can craft.

On Speech and Barter the solution would be to include a lot more checks for the different levels it can reach, add in some form of Pacification mechanic where you can convince attacks to leave you alone or to surrender.

There is a lot that can be done.... just not removing the entire system to fix a problem they themselves created in the first place....
 
Well, if we still had an overworld map to travel on then maybe Speech or Barter could be used on humanoid groups to convince them not to attack you. Like a raider party has seen you and are moving into position. What do you want to do? Engage in combat? Flee the scene? Talk them out of attacking you? Or maybe just paying a relative sum to your barter skill to make them leave you alone?
Then a 1-100 (or 1-300) system would totally work as each point actually 'does' something. I guess it can still be done in first person real time though, with raiders first initiating dialogue and then you get a Fallout 3 speech/barter check which if you pass will make them leave you alone so long as you don't enter their territory. But considering how trivial the combat is in Bethesda games it's not like it'd be any loss if you failed to speech/barter some generic raiders.
 
There were Speech skills in Daggerfall that stopped certain creatures from being immediately hostile to you, but in a game like Fallout, not only is the world too small to make this effective, there's too small a pool of enemies who are not there just to shoot at/charge you. Animal Friend mostly handled that.
 
Then the solution there would be to make combat more dangerous. Much more deadly, not make the player such a demigod.
 
Question: Have either of you guys played a title in the Shin Megami Tensei series? Specifically the communing with demons aspect.

I could see Obsidian putting this into Fallout, with some tweaking. It would put PER, AGI, Speech and other stats to use in dialogue much more often.
 
Indeed. Loved it since I first played Persona 3 and Strange Journey. That negotiation system though is something that I'm surprised more RPG companies don't put into use. Human Revolution came close and did it pretty well, but a skilled RPG developer could spread that system's influence.
 
You mean Persona 2, 3 didn't have the negotiation system. But I agree, that should be in more RPGs.
 
Haven't played Innocent Sin yet. I meant to say that Persona 3 was my intro to the series, and Strange Journey was where I first saw the negotiation system being used. My mistake there.

If such a system did get introduced to Fallout though, it would put more emphasis on quality NPCs, which Obsidian handles well, and I'd say CDProjeckt RED, InExile and Larian as well.
 
Walpknut said:
No idea how removing an entire Layer of character customization and player interaction while making it so you can get every single perk and all Stats maxed out in a single run without exploits could ever result into a Deeper game....
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There's apparently a water breathing perk now, maybe they mean deeper like you can go underwater? BethLogic™
 
Radiosity said:
Walpknut said:
No idea how removing an entire Layer of character customization and player interaction while making it so you can get every single perk and all Stats maxed out in a single run without exploits could ever result into a Deeper game....
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There's apparently a water breathing perk now, maybe they mean deeper like you can go underwater? BethLogic™
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Actually, the perk chart displays levels of a vault so the lvl 10 perks are super deep yo.
 
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Stanislao Moulinsky said:
I understand that, but skepticism is warranted when a PR spokeperson talks of positive things like "characters have life-like AI" or "the twist of this story will blow your mind" or "we made the game more accessible but it's just as deep as the previous games". Not for partially negative things like "there are pacifist options but I'm not sure you can go the whole game without violence". What is the salesman trying to sell here?
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There are always reasons to lie or twist a story when you're trying to make a sale. At this point he's not trying to sell just the product. He's trying to sell the game, and the idea of the game, and the message that you should be really excited about the game and should tell all of your friends about it.

Maybe he's lying about his level of involvement in the meat of the project. He's listed as the director, but he's joked that he hasn't seen the entire game world and that there's stuff that's been added that he doesn't know about. And if he can't confirm or deny that you can complete the main quest without violence (which should be 100% scripted with no way to achieve without taking advantage of a bug) then maybe he's not actually that deeply involved. Maybe he's more of an executive producer on this one (think movie term not game industry term) and their leaving the real directing work to someone else.

Or, maybe he's worried that admitting that there's no non-violent ending option will scare off some customers, so he's giving a vague non-answer. In either case he's being a salesman. When someone doesn't give you a clear answer, that's what's happening.
 
The system they have seems so broken. I wonder how easy it would be to do a no-level run on Fallout 4. I'm guessing pretty easy. :p
 
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